Acer Aspire 5542

Juan Peròn's fix for the touchpad locking button works great on Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat as well.

In this case I wasn't certain if Gedit would work so I did this:
kdesudo dolphin

(navigate to /etc/default/grub and click it, this opened it in Kate.)

== Alternatively, I suppose easier would be to just do:
kdesudo kate /etc/default/grub

== In Kubuntu, always, ALWAYS make sure that you know when to use kdesudo (whenever wanting to sudo a gui-based kde program, use kdesudo !!!) and sudo.
Getting this mixed up can and will cause a lot of headache when you suddenly find that important files suddenly become read-only and you get a bunch of error messages which basically make your pretty kubuntu system into a pretty useless paperweight.
There are fixes for it that I found after a lot of googling, but which I forgot again, so fix 1 is and always will be, to not get those two commands mixed up.

Большое спасибо.
была проблема с зависанием тачпада, но благодаря вам, все исправлено !!

Juan Perón, al agregar 'i8042.nomux', funciona!. Pero, lo que ocurre ahora es que las flechitas del touchpad para subir y bajar, solo funcionan siempre bajando :|. Alguna posible solución en mente?. Gracias.

Hi, I had the same issue with the soundcard jacks as chris. Plugging in a hdmi monitor appears to have no effect. Under ubuntu 10, out of the box the wifi is unstable (ath9k driver) - using Wicd allows for quick reconnects but it takes several attempts before seeming stable and then can be upset by a download.

I did get the mic working using alsamixer at the terminal to unmute the front mic - but again the jacks don't retarget the mic and though I know it's possible I've not stored the settings yet so have to do this each time I want to use it.

All in all, I'm feeling like the 5542 is not a great laptop for linux or maybe it's my choice of distro? Any help with these faults would be appreciated.

Hi, I had the same issue with the soundcard jacks as chris. Plugging in a hdmi monitor appears to have no effect. Under ubuntu 10, out of the box the wifi is unstable (ath9k driver) - using Wicd allows for quick reconnects but it takes several attempts before seeming stable and then can be upset by a download.

I did get the mic working using alsamixer at the terminal to unmute the front mic - but again the jacks don't retarget the mic and though I know it's possible I've not stored the settings yet so have to do this each time I want to use it.

All in all, I'm feeling like the 5542 is not a great laptop for linux or maybe it's my choice of distro? Any help with these faults would be appreciated.

Hey,

Thanks for the wiki, great work. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Linux LTS on Acer Aspire 5542 and I have three major problems I cant resolve… (I'm only a great ubuntu lover but no genius)

1. The sound card has never been recognized and I'm always having problems with it, both with the double input and output.
2. The camera freezes when I use it with skype
3. I have exactly the problem previously mentioned with the touchpad and the touchpad button.

Hope to hear from someone,

With pulseaudio in Ubuntu 10.04 and OpenSUSE 11.3 dont work good for me. Too many issues with microphone in all VoIP programms (skype,ekiga,empathy, Google iTalk).

PS: On Debian Squeezy, it's work fine. But debian not stable yet. :(

One problem I faced with Linux 10 on the Aspire 5542 was that the sound jacks on the side doesn't work like in Windows, and if you plug in a jack, the speakers still make sounds, also you cannot re-direct sound via the HDMI port, though it says it is, it plays it via the laptop speakers.

Any fixes?

Chris

Hey Juan,

I don't know who you are but you're one hell of a genius. I've just spent like 3 hours looking for touchpad solution both on the Internet and Ubuntu forum but found nothing. But here you are with your simple-script solution and it works like a goddamn charm. Can't stop myself from playing with the touchpad button now lol.
Thanks ever so much. I totally bow towards you, mate :) Cheers.

Best regards.

You can make work the Acer 5542 touchpad in Ubuntu Karmic following this instructions:

Open a terminal and type:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

The gedit text editor will open. You should search this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash”

and replace it adding i8042.nomux variable as follows:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash i8042.nomux”

Save the file.

Now in the console type

sudo update-grub

When completed, restart your computer.